Zoomorphic

The opening of Zoomorphic took place last Saturday at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, Cwmbran, Wales. Louise Jones-Williams curated this show, and I think she did an excellent job pulling together a wide variety of mediums and approaches into a well blended whole.

The first piece that really caught my attention when I walked into the main gallery was Kerry Jameson’s ceramic piece ‘Black Ram’. I was rather taken by the textural and painterly effects she has managed to achieve through Raku firing techniques and incorporating hessian textiles into the clay. This piece had a real presence in the room and seemed to call to me wherever I was standing. Having visited her website since returning home, I have also fallen in love with her fantasticly dynamic ink drawings and paintings.

Kerry Jameson’s Black Ram

Another artist whose work I was drawn to was Anthropomorphica (the artist name used by Melanie Ashton). She describes herself as “a wanderling, doll maker, dreamer, collector of bones, picker upper of sticks and hoarder of moss and bark. A lover of ridicularity, a concoction of mismatching parts and a weaver of knots and tangles” and predominately makes art dolls, a phenomenon I’m pretty new to. Whatever you want to call them, her delicate creations seem to have emerged out from underneath moss and stones, and carry a sense of wonderment & resignation, despair & hope, decay & delight – a condition of contradiction I am not entirely unfamiliar with myself.

Delicate piece of work by Anthropomorphica, prints by Adrian Higgins in the background

Delighted to meet Anthropomorphica’s Melanie Ashton

And as for myself, I just about managed to finish my large new work ‘Tell me Your Secrets’ in time for the delivery date. I say new work, but I have been working on this piece on & off for the past two years, returning to it in between teaching, commission and making other pieces so in some ways this piece feels like old news to me. It feels good to finally have the work out there, get it seen, and receive valuable feedback.

My new work ‘Tell me Your Secrets’ alongside some of my masks. Jackie Needham’s ‘The Watcher’ in the foreground. The work featured in the banner at the top of this post is also by Jackie.

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